


Defining Us, Part I

by Peril_in_Peace



Series: The More Things Change [5]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Attempts at humor and lightheartedness, F/M, Fluff, Post-Infinity War, Romance, With requisite unsure awkwardness, one of the sappiest things i've ever written, talk of marriage, tradition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 21:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12921093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peril_in_Peace/pseuds/Peril_in_Peace
Summary: “Look… things just… don’t work that way out here. Maybe for regular people who never leave their homeworlds, have holidays and traditions and... who live regular lives and know that space is out there but never… we… Gamora doesn’t have a homeworld anymore and I coul-- wouldn’t… couldn’t… go back to mine. Things are different for people like us.”For 12 Days of Starmora on Tumblr - Day 1 - "Tradition"





	Defining Us, Part I

 

The only “label” that ever really meant anything to Gamora was the word “family.” The things that went along with it… _home_ … _love… belonging_ . Those who made a family _real_ and not some forced, _manipulative_ thing like _Thanos_ had--

Her family _had once been_ her parents. Her Mother and Father. She knew there were others. Her brain told her that… some small thread in her heart told her that, but she didn’t _remember_ . She tried, thought she _owed_ them that. To remember. But had to admit, she couldn’t… Even her mother and father’s faces had smudged and faded, the sounds of their voices so distant, that she couldn’t tell between what she really remembered and what she made up for the sake of _feeling_ like she did.

Her family was Nebula. Her one real constant for so long... the anchor in the swirling storm of misery and pain and grief and rage between lifetimes. And learning with her, how to really be a sister, since.

Her family was Drax, who laughed a little too often, but sometimes still surprised her with the depth and wisdom of his words; and Rocket, whose nods and darkened eyes beneath biting wit spoke of a shared understanding every time he fixed a misbehaving mod of hers or she one of his; and Groot, who still looked up to her (figuratively) when she tried to teach him something, even though he pretended not to.

It was Mantis, who delighted in being helpful to those she loved, because _she_ wanted to and _because_ she loved them; and Kraglin, who always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, quietly looking out for Peter all while giving him shit because _that’s what brothers do_. And it was even an old dead Centaurian Ravager whose little trinkets still littered the bridge and occasionally surfaced in the engine room.

Her family was Peter, whose mere _presence_ slowed her heart and cut her strings and eased her nightmares away.

So when Peter’s grandfather asked Gamora one night, on the long haul back to Earth from Xandarian space, if she was Peter’s _wife_ … she was unsure how to respond.

It was a term she had simply not considered.

Of course, she was… _familiar_ with the concept. Marriage was ubiquitous throughout the galaxy, a legal and sometimes religious rite on the vast majority of worlds.

But they were spacers. With no real allegiance or _citizenship_ , for that matter, to any established governing body to even oversee such a thing. None of them had any religious affiliation to demand a formal union. (Notwithstanding Peter’s harried invocations to the “Jesus” from his _Spirit in the Sky_ song in times of crisis or frustration--which, she had learned quickly, his grandfather similarly made… perhaps it was a family thing?)

Drax had Hovat, of course. He’d told them of the cultural significance of the traditional family unit on his homeworld. Marriage and procreation were practically an expectation of his people.

Gamora thought her own parents were married. It was hard to remember, but they had all lived together, she knew… they had been happy. Before. She had a very vague, hazy, snapshot of a memory of her mother presenting her father with a gift to commemorate some kind of milestone in their relationship…

“Gamora?” Pops asked gently, pulling her out of her own head. She looked up, squinting at him.

“Hmm?”

“You okay, kiddo?”

She nodded quickly and got up from the too-deep chair she’d sunk into and made her way toward the door of the common room, half forgetting that they’d been in the middle of a conversation.

“Take that as a no…” she heard him mumble after her.   

 

* * *

 

“Are you… satisfied with our… arrangement?”

Peter stopped just shy of shorting out the new control panel for the repulsor array and flipped up his goggles.

“Huh?”

“ _Us_ .” Gamora continued, her face a little crossed between frustrated and confused. “What we… _have_ … our… I don’t know, _status_ .” Peter could practically hear the air quotes around the word. “Are you happy with the way things _are_?”

He sat back on the wing of the _Milano_ and dangled his legs, fiddling with the arc spanner as he looked down at her, then around the hangar, as if Rocket or Groot were going to jump out to take a picture of the look on his face. Where the hell was this coming from?

“Where the hell is this coming from?” he asked incredulously.

She rolled her eyes. “Can you just tell me?”

Peter resisted rolling his eyes too, but didn’t manage to hold back an uncomfortable shrug.

“I-- well, _yeah…_ Wait--no? Is this a trick question?”

Gamora groaned and threw her hands up, turning on her heel and stalking away. He clearly heard her grumbling about his being of no help at all.

“Wait! What’d I--” he made to slide down to go after her, before realizing that Drax was inconveniently below him, ready to pass up the power meter he’d asked for moments ago.

“Imbecile,” Drax stated, shaking his head. Peter did roll his eyes at that, waving Drax out of the way.

“Asshole,” he bit back, landing hard with both feet on the deck. He pointed at the ship and glared at Drax. “Don’t touch anything.” Drax opened his stance and held up his hands innocently.

Satisfied, Peter jogged after Gamora, slipping through the blast door and into the corridor just as it was closing behind her.

“Gamora! What the hell… can you stop, please?” he huffed. She paused a few paces ahead of him and turned around. He held up a hand at her in thanks as he leaned up against the wall and caught his breath. “You just… ask me a loaded question like that out of nowhere, and expect me to… what… quote Shakespeare?”

“I…” Gamora had the grace to look a little guilty, her arms uncrossing a little and her face softening. “What?” Her forehead creased back up as she registered a reference that she didn’t know.

Peter waved his hand and shook his head, pushing off the bulkhead and stepping toward her. “Nevermind…”

“I’m sorry, you’re right, I…” she bit her lip and looked everywhere but at him. He wanted to hold her, but she had gone from having her arms standoffishly folded over her front, to awkwardly held around her, sort of hugging herself.

Whatever this was, it was actually either really bugging her or really important to her.

Peter studied her face, her stance, the way she clenched her fingers around her own arms. He took a deep breath and leaned back on the wall.

“Okay… ask me again. I want to make sure I really understand the question.”

She quirked an eyebrow, then visibly relaxed. “Are you… _happy_ with the way things are… between us… as… partners?”

Peter frowned and watched her watch him for a second, before swallowing hard and staring at his boots. “Honestly? Right now, I kinda feel like if you even have to _ask_ a question like that after all this time, I’m doing something wrong.”

He looked back up at her, to see her arms dropped at her side and her face drooping and contorted. She hadn’t meant it like that. Peter sighed.

“If you’re asking if I’m happy with _you_ , that’s a dumb question. You know that,” he said softly. Gamora stepped toward him and leaned against the bulkhead beside him. She curled her fingers between his as they slid down the wall to sit on the floor.

“I love you so much,” Peter whispered into her hair. He could feel her smile and relax a bit against him. “Of course… of _course_ I’m… you’re my _world_. You and our whole… messed up crazy awesome family... There’s no place I’d rather be than with you.”

He paused, thought for a moment, then hesitantly asked, “Are you? You know…? The same?”

“Yes.” And really, it was all Gamora needed to say. She squeezed his hand, though, and he smiled slightly.

“Then why did you--”

She shook her head. “It’s silly.”

He eyed her. “Probably not, knowing you.”

Gamora ran her thumb over his knuckles. “I… was talking with your grandfather. Relationships came up… he asked about my family, my parents, Nebula… told me a bit about his family--yours--back on Earth… your mother and grandmother… and then… he asked me if we were married...”

The _oohhhh_ formed on Peter’s lips almost involuntarily.

“...I hadn’t actually thought about it before,” she continued. “But once he _said_ it, I--”

“Started thinking about it?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Gamora nodded.  

Peter’s eyes narrowed.

“So, wait… was all that, like… a _proposal_ , or something?”

“A _what_?”

“Are you asking me to marry you?” He enunciated each word carefully and distinctly, like a statement of fact instead of a question.

Gamora’s face scrunched up like she’d just sucked on a lemon. Peter couldn’t help but sit back and grin.

“Yes?” she answered. Peter quirked an eyebrow and smirked.

“Was that a question or an answer?”

Gamora groaned and let her head fall back against the bulkhead. “This is foolish.”

Peter thought for a moment, then nudged her shoulder, trying to steal her attention away from the ceiling.

“Is it?”

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t that Peter had never thought about it before.

But honestly, it was much more when he was a kid.

He very, _very_ fuzzily remembered attending exactly one wedding in his entire life. Back on earth, when he was maybe five or six… a friend of his mom’s, one of the few other single mothers in town. He’d played with her son a lot, but didn’t remember his name. Their moms took turns watching each other’s kids while they were at work.

He remembered sitting on a hard wooden pew in the church where he had to go to Sunday school on Christmas and Easter. But all he could see was the backs of people’s heads. He’d pretty much gotten through the ceremony by squirming and when his mother shushed and glared, he got on by making up stories about the scenes in the stained glass windows… and the weird strangers seated nearby.

For some reason, his most vivid memory of the boring church part was the terrible toupee on the guy sitting right in front of him. Probably only because when he pointed it out to his mom, she’d tried really hard not to laugh.

Peter remembered a bit more of the reception.

There was a good band and a dancefloor. And his mother took off her high heels and danced with him for what seemed like hours and hours.

The point was… after the wedding… they didn’t see those friends much anymore. The boy he’d played with… had a dad all of the sudden… and from Peter’s little kid point of view… his friend’s whole life had changed. They might have even moved away.

He was embarrassed, thinking back on it now… Peter had gone through this whole phase after that, of pathetically trying to set his mom up with any guy remotely in her age range that smiled at her as they passed. He wanted _her_ to get married, so that _he_ could have…

Peter shook his head. “God, are _all_ kids morons, or was I just special?” he murmured, checking their heading one more time before kicking his feet up onto the console and unwrapping the earbuds from around the Zune.

He heard a distinctly Pops-like snort behind him.

“ _You_ don’t get to comment. Do you have any idea what you started?” Peter said without looking back.

“Yeah. Drax was real… animated in the retelling of the ‘hangar tift.” Peter twisted around and glared at his grandfather with the one eye that could peer over the back of his seat. Pops raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, I’m not the one draggin’ his feet, here.”

“Dragging my… we’ve been together for _four years_ , man.”

“Exactly. What’s that song by that famous lady… _Put a Ring on It_?”

“Huh?”

“Lock it _down_ , kid. You’re never gonna find another girl like her.”

“I’m not looking!”

“Then what’s taking so long?”

“Look… things just… don’t _work_ that way out here. Maybe for regular people who never leave their homeworlds, have _holidays_ and _traditions_ and... who live regular lives and know that space is _out there_ but never… we… Gamora doesn’t _have_ a homeworld anymore and I coul-- wouldn’t… couldn’t… go back to mine. Things are different for people like us.”

“People like you,” Pops deadpanned. “You say that like you’re--”

“What? _Not_ normal? We’re not, Pops.”

Peter quit fiddling with the earbud cord and dropped the Zune to his lap as Pops slowly walked up and stopped next to his seat, hands in his pockets and staring out the front viewports.

“What’s so wrong with that?” Pops said casually, shrugging. Peter’s eyes flicked up.

“So, you’re scared of screwing it up, ‘cause it’s not something you’re used to. Your whole _life_ has been getting used to new things.” Pops looked over at him. “Tell me you’re really opposed to it.”

Peter shook his head. “No, I’m not. We, uh… we talked about it.”

“And?”

“ _And_ … and…” Peter lowered his voice, dropping his feet from the console and leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “I think we kinda started to _like_ the idea… and then I realized I had no _clue_ what to do.”   

Pops took a deep breath and strolled over to the co-pilot’s station a couple meters away, dropping into it and mirroring Peter’s pose before looking over at his grandson, then back down at the deck.

“You know… I got no illusion here, that once we finish with this job, you’re not gonna swan back off and I may never see you again--”

“Pops--”

“No, don’t tell me it ain’t the truth. You’ve got a life out here, and no one’s expecting you to play house back on Earth. And you’ll say you’ll visit, and you’ll have every intention to… but weeks’ll turn into months, and then years, and... hate to break it to ya kid, but I’m damn old.”

Peter tried to find something to disagree with, but if he was honest… he sighed.

“So what, this is a guilt trip now? ‘Missed everything, so let me see you married off before I die’?”

“What? No--” Pops gritted his teeth and took a deep breath before continuing. “No,” he said firmly. “I’m _saying_ that _you_ missed everything. And maybe I was reading things wrong, but… something about being home did you some good. And if I’m not overstepping… it did Gamora some good too. Maybe you guys _need_ a little normal, need to feel a little like you’re home, and now that you have one again, can spend some time there, you oughta make it count… maybe you’re not so different from those folks who have _homes_ and _traditions_ and _holidays_ and shit… or you don’t _have_ to be, anyway… ” Pops trailed off; losing steam, but having made his point.  

“We should get married on Earth,” Peter concluded quietly, absently twisting the earbud cord around his finger.

“ _That’s_ what I’m saying.”

Peter couldn’t help but consider the possibilities.

He thought about Gamora in a white dress, like in a movie. Rings. Music. Dancing with her on the green grass of Pops’ yard. Tying cans to the bumper of the Mustang… wasn’t that a thing?

He smiled a little to himself.

 

* * *

 

“What do you think?”

Gamora secretly loved it when Peter got excited about something. The way his hands moved just a little bit more, and how his eyes got just _that_ much more wide and expressive.

“I mean, it’s not like we have to do some crazy huge, like, Princess Di thing,” Peter waved his hand around, and she knew he was imagining something elaborate from his memories of Earth. “But… there are all kinds of little things… nice things.” He smiled at her, shifting so suddenly to a look of quiet sincerity that she almost felt compelled to _cry_.

“Meaningful,” he said, taking her hand. “Like rings. We give each other rings, and it’s all symbolic and sappy, but… you wear it, and everybody knows; ‘Hey, that guy’s married to her.’” Peter grinned and she shook her head, trying to hide a smile of her own.

“And you gotta stand up in front of everybody and do the vows part. That’s not so different from say, on Xandar or Shi’ar or anywhere else… but… here, you can bring up as much backup as you want.”

“Backup.” Gamora raised an incredulous eyebrow.

“Yeah, brothers, sisters, best friends, whoever… can stand up next to you through the whole thing.”

Gamora considered this. “I… like that. Making the others you care about part of your expression of commitment.”  

“And…” Peter continued. “We get to throw a party afterwards.”

“Naturally,” she teased.

“Hey, do you wanna do this right, or not?”

Gamora drew closer to him, brushing her hand down the side of Peter’s face and pulled him in for a slow, long kiss. She waited for him to weave his fingers into her hair at the top of her neck, then waited some more, digging her fingertips into his back.

She finally pulled away, with a whisper of a smile at the bleary, satisfied look on his face.

She secretly loved doing that to him.

“Yes.” She said. “Let’s do this right.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so... I don’t know about ya’ll, but I worked 8 years in retail through high school and college, and even years later, I am still straight up scarred by the holidays. I have reached a point where I tolerate Christmas music (in moderation), but I still don’t see a day where I will ever again put up a tree or lights, and I truly abhor going anywhere near a mall in December.
> 
> So call me a stick in the mud, but my work with the prompts will be mostly holiday agnostic (holiday adjacent, at best... some of those prompts were hard to twist). But all about the Starmora (and isn’t that what really matters?).
> 
> Part I is “Tradition,” Part II will be “Dancing.” 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and for your support! :)


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